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The big coastwise tug Hydrographer slid stern-ward into a slip cluttered with driftwood and bituminous dust, stopping within heaving distance of three coal-laden barges which in their day had reared "royal s'ls" to the wayward winds of the seven seas. Near-by lay Horace Howland's ocean-going steam yacht, Veiled Ladye, which had put into Norfolk from Caribbean ports, to replenish her bunkers.
American lads shunned these ships and, in fact, the ambitious youngster of the coastwise towns began to cease following the sea almost a century ago. It is sometimes forgotten that the period during which the best American manhood sought a maritime career lay between the Revolution and the War of 1812.
The interests of our coastwise and inland commerce, will be greatly extended and benefited. Many rivers, with beds choked and obstructed by the unsightly rocks and debris deposited by the annual floods, and for the same reason, dry for many months in each year, will again become navigable.
There was to be mutual reciprocity in inland trade on the North American continent; but coastwise, while we opened all our harbors and rivers to the British, they shut us out from theirs in the colonies and the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Under the Emergency Shipping Act we can get them provisional American registry and that's all we need. Before a great while Uncle Sam is going to turn his antiquated shipping laws inside out, and any foreign-built boats we may acquire now will be given the right to run in the coastwise trade also."
The only time they had ever been separated was once in their early youth, when Jake had been fired with a desire to go to sea; but he deserted the coastwise schooner in the first port and came home, because he could not bear it any longer without his brother.
For years Cubans of liberal tendencies had sent their sons to be educated in the United States, very many of whom had been naturalized before returning home. Cuba was but ninety miles from Florida, and much of our coastwise shipping passed in sight of the island.
It is a shorter voyage from Cardiff to Algiers than an American skipper pricks off on his chart when he takes his steamer from New York to New Orleans or Galveston. This coastwise trade may lack the romance of the old school of the square-rigged ship in the Roaring Forties, but it has always been the more perilous and exacting.
This result is more easily explained than the inroads made on our more ordinary foreign traffic, in sailing vessels, by the mercantile marine of second- and third-rate powers. This is eloquently told by the annual government returns and the daily shipping-list. While our coastwise tonnage increases, that employed in foreign trade remains stationary or declines.
Just at this time, too, a particular tang of romance was in the air. The Germans had threatened to devastate our Atlantic coast from Eastport to Key West with a flock of submersibles. There actually were a few submarines lurking about the pathways of our coastwise shipping; but, as usual, the Hun's boast came to naught.
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